The humanitarian community of 2010 must reinvent itself if millions of lives are to be saved in more complex and diverse disasters threatening human kind in the near future.

The warning comes from the Director of the Humanitarian Futures Programme at King’s College London, Dr. Randolph Kent, just a month after the Haiti earthquake disaster. He believes that if organisations with responsibility for future generations fail to take a long-term perspective then the management of future catastrophies will fail.

“Take a peek into the future, perhaps 10 or 15 years from now and we can anticipate a day when the humanitarian community will have to provide water and food to millions of people in drought-affected Africa, tend to several hundred thousand after a cyclone in Asia and deal with another "Haiti" - all at the same time.”

Dr. Kent says starkly that the humanitarian community of today would not be able to cope. “That is, not unless they reinvent themselves.”  But, he emphasises, there is every reason to be optimistic. 

“Human kind is remarkably creative, imaginative and innovative.  We have great scientists,  technologists, social scientists and experts in humanitarian aid who together can develop strategies which will mitigate the effects of what are certain to be more complex and widespread disasters of the future.”

He says priority must be given to long-term perspective planning, the first step of which could be a six-point checklist for humanitarian aid organisations to apply now:  

1. strengthen your capacity to anticipate what might happen so you need less time to plan
2. introduce more adaptive and agile planning processes
3. promote collaboration with scientists to improve analytical capacity, broaden understanding of the complexities of societies and communities, and get a new perspective on possible future scenarios
4. nurture partnerships with the corporate sector and the military. "The military spends 90 percent of its time on strategic analysis," he points out.
5. actively identify, prioritise and implement the latest innovations.
6. foster and empower strategic leadership to develop vision. Dr. Kent says the humanitarian community has moved from an "advocacy, and morally driven" approach, to "being increasingly driven by managerialism"; it was time to bring advocacy and vision back to the forefront.  

“The shift has begun and long-standing views of how disasters play out are being challenged. Nolonger are humanitarian activities limited to immediate response and post-conflict recovery," says Dr. Kent.

He predicts the emergence of a “new humanitarianism” with an expansion of humanitarian ‘actors’ - governments, the corporate and military sectors, celebrity ambassadors - and a new humanitarian agenda covering  governance, livelihood, security, social protection and other development-like activities.  “Addressing vulnerability would become the key focus and the long-term perspective would be the instinct of everyone with responsibility to protect future generations from suffering.”

And he has a clear vision of the future for the most conspicuous of humanitarian organisations – the United Nations. "Broadly speaking, I feel that when it comes to humanitarian affairs, the UN has to become more of a standard-bearer, online coordinating facilitator, an innovations catalyst, and an active advocate about future vulnerability and solutions."

Note: Dr. Randolph Kent is renowned internationally for his work over the past 25 years in  practical and policy engagement in the provision of emergency assistance, serving with the United Nations in natural disasters and conflict situations